I keep getting the warning: "For security reasons, you must pass the remote ip to reCAPTCHA" no matter what I change within my code and I just can't understand why. The Google documentation for implementing in PHP is very simple and the resulting script throws no syntax errors.

It seems to have a problem with this line (Google's code) in verify.php:

Code:

$SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"],

The setup is a custom blog: http://www.bellsdomestics.co.uk/blog.php storing comments in an html file and including them on a php page which contains html form and other elements. Simple checking of form fields is being done by javascript and the method is POST with verify.php as the action.

Just have to get my function correct now for reloading the original page as everything else is working!

<b>Ps:</b> I know what your saying with the unreadable words, CAPTCHA can be frustrating but this 'seemed' like a quick fix to stop spam. This was after I ip banned a commenter from the site. Unfortunately we lost our google position due to lots of viagra spam from a robot based in Russia ~ lame :/

03-21-2013, 05:13 PM

tangoforce

Quote:

Originally Posted by gcmax

CAPTCHA can be frustrating

No, not Captcha, ReCaptcha. Captcha is the name of the technique and there are many that are still easy to read while blocking bots (well temporarily anyway).

ReCaptcha is a service that offers you a captcha on your site. THEIR captchas are increasingly hard to use. If you use it, you use it at your peril especially on contact and order forms.

03-21-2013, 05:19 PM

patryk

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fou-Lu

Image counting ftw!
How many bunnies do you see in this image?
I keep recaptcha at bay with a 10' pole I makeshift'd.

All working now so it's time for some content, then solve Google+1 and Facebook button issues and finally W3C compliance.
Other than that and interestingly I think a robot or someone messing around who has seen this thread put a spam comment in after I got recaptcha to work!! I really do hope it is a joke and not a sign of things to come because otherwise, what is the point of having a recaptcha?

All working now so it's time for some content, then solve Google+1 and Facebook button issues and finally W3C compliance.
Other than that and interestingly I think a robot or someone messing around who has seen this thread put a spam comment in after I got recaptcha to work!! I really do hope it is a joke and not a sign of things to come because otherwise, what is the point of having a recaptcha?

Cheers.

Captcha's block bots, not people. There are actually people whom are paid just to post spam. Bots are much easier to write of course, and if you use common things like a vBulletin or a widely used cms than you are often targeted for the ease of automation.
There isn't a thing you can do about a human though. That's why you need to add additional spam blocking tools. For example, from what I see I delete about 20 posts per hour on average as spam. Given what it shows, those are posts and threads not seen by other users, so our new spam fighting techniques are working well. I don't mind cleaning up a few hundred junk spam that's stuck in moderation queue every day; it sure beats a few months ago when we were seeing hundreds of posts passing through queue and showing up. What a mess that was.

03-21-2013, 06:44 PM

patryk

Quote:

Originally Posted by gcmax

I guess for people with screen readers you just use the alt tag instead of having to build an audio library for every captcha.
Cheers.

but it has audio. i just never made nice button for it in gui. click TTS link ;)

and btw i personally find this one easier to understand that reCaptcha's text-to-speach. it seams to me that reCaptcha's goal in creating that TTS thing was to make blind ppl feel like they are getting deaf too :D

03-21-2013, 10:43 PM

felgall

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangoforce

I can't read them and the audible versions are impossible to understand too. They've gone far too far with making it unrecognisable

"They" haven't made it unrecognisable at all - they know it is unrecognisable and are asking for help in figuring it out. Each RECAPTCHA image consists of two words - one known and one that is straight out of a book that has been scanned in where they can't make sense of the word. By having lots of people guess at what they think the word is they hope to be able to finish converting the scanned book into text. The actual CAPTCHA portion works mainly off of the easier to read word that is already known.

That this also provides a way to try to block bots is a side effect - the primary purpose that RECAPTCHA is intending to perform is to get help in decoding words where the OCR they are using can't figure out the word from the scanned copy. Their end goal is to end up with millions of books scanned and converted to text.

03-22-2013, 06:57 PM

gcmax

UPDATE: reCAPTCHA removed!

After the effort to get reCAPTCHA to work we still got spam and from the context, frequency and no. of pages viewed they were bots.
To fix I made a small PHP script to send the contents of the message to my email address at work, after which I will manually add comments after reviewing them first. It seems the only way to fully block all spam.

Ps: Google has now reduced our website to 2 extra links under our main URL due to this latest spam, so I can't take the risk any more. I HATE spammers :mad:

By the way if anyone wants my code for the message system, pm me and I will help you implement it, maybe you will have better luck than I did!